Mercedes played their tire strategy too conservatively, betting on no safety cars.
Praying for no safety cars - remember Toto pleading with Masi to keep the safety car in because it would hurt Mercedes? Remember Lewis' bleeped out reaction to hearing double waved yellows? Red Bull's only chance was Checo holding Hamilton up (something he did brilliantly), and a late safety car. They played this strategy to that end and got
insanely lucky.
Sucks for Lewis, because he had the race in the bag
in the absence of a safety car, but was thwarted by two backmarkers fighting over last place, his team's fear of losing place while pitting under the VSC, and, as the seconds ticked down, a panicked and clumsy decision by Masi to avoid finishing the race on a safety car. Sometimes that's just the way it goes. At least we didn't get a repeat of Prost-Senna.
I don't see any reason why some procedures, if not absolutely necessary, should stand in the way of finishing the title decider on green flags, which everyone agreed was a priority before the race.
Unlapping the 5 cars isn't an issue to me logically. People complain that this disadvantaged Sainz and others because they didn't have their backmarkers cleared. But who cares? The entire rest of the field was irrelevant at that point. Unpopular as it was (I was screaming BS during the race, even after it resumed), Masi found some compromise that gave us the ending we needed, while dealing with an awkwardly timed crash. One lap sooner or later and apparently there's no controversy - but controversy and inconsistency defined the season, so it was a fitting end (regardless of who won).
Regarding the partial unlapping, people complain that Sainz had no shot to challenge Max for 2nd place. But given that Checo was blasted for holding Hamilton up
and interfering with their championship, with Checo addressing this afterward with an apology saying that it was only because he was doing it for his team ... does anyone really think Sainz would have dared to race Max and Lewis on the final lap of the championship decider when he has nothing to gain in the WDC and a place to lose if he crashes? No way. The calculus doesn't work.
These same people say it's unfair to drivers like Ricciardo because he had no opportunity to gain a place, but not unlapping the cars (which is apparently perfectly ok to them) similarly disadvantages Norris at the front of the backmarkers. The only difference between the scenarios was that now neither McClaren could catch the man ahead, and the two championship contenders could duke it out for a proper finish. That's a fair trade off to me.
And now we have people complaining about the ability of teams to pit during yellow flags. Because Hamilton lost. Madness. The whole point is to inject some strategy into the sport for the spectacle. Something to break the monotony of the best driver in the fastest car from taking the lead and simply finishing the race. Otherwise, the FIA wouldn't have mandated tires that can't last an entire race.
The real issue is that F1 does not have a system that allows the pack to re-organize itself in-place during the yellow flags - something Vettel has been asking for for a long time. But their software is too inflexible to allow this common sense adjustment. So it seems that rigid, dogmatic thinking is so common in F1 circles that even their software engineers can't possibly conceive of a reason to devise a solution that involves overriding a car's lap number. Stupid. Short Sighted. Or you know what? Have two safety cars. One for lapped cars, one for the main pack, and pit the second safety car when they catch up to the main pack. There's a solution somewhere that doesn't require burning 2 or 3 laps of a race.
Meanwhile, the regulations fetishists are angry that Lewis and Max battled it out on the last lap on the tires their engineers put them on because the Race Director made a human decision to override or suspend procedures that were interfering with the conclusion to
the most important race of the season. "That's not racing!!1!!". As if finishing the race behind a safety car is. I was personally shocked the race wasn't red flagged to reset the cars and change the tires ... but when suggesting this after the fact, these same regulations fetishists will point out that this would have been an abuse of red flags even if it would have resulted in the most 'fair' result.
So apparently the only possible outcomes are to give Hamilton the advantage on the restart with 5 blue flags between him and Max, or end the race. Sorry, but I prefer the ending we got because I'm okay with the race director tweaking little procedural obstacles
in exceptional circumstances like
the most important race of the season. Otherwise, why have a human race director at all? Just replace him with a set of algorithms and a team of data input specialists. I'm sure nothing could go wrong.
And I'm okay with Max winning the championship because he was the best driver this season - even if he's overly aggressive at times. If it wasn't for Lewis power sliding into Max at Silverstone and Bottas bowling his way through the Red Bulls the next week leaving Max with half a car, the WDC would have been out of reach a month ago barring a sub 2nd place finish by Max in the final races. Considering the only times Max
didn't finish P1 or P2 was when his tire blew out, when Hamilton punted him off track, when Bottas ruined his race, and when Max teabagged Hamilton at Monza ... it seems pretty likely he'd have done at least 2nd. In the slower car. The Silverstone event alone was a 32 ± 1 point swing in Hamilton's favor if you presume (as Hamilton did) that Max would have won if he made it to maggots & becketts first. That alone nullifies Abu Dhabi, so I'm not mad that Max got a little luck going his way.
So, what's done is done. I don't think it was necessarily done right, but I think Masi had a tough hand to play and he tried to compromise a little on all the options to achieve a very specific goal (finishing the championship with green flags). People can be sad for Hamilton, that's fair. He did enough to win the Championship but for the actions of others. He's a living legend of the sport in the fastest car on the grid except around corners, so he's exciting to watch. All the complaining gets annoying though.
Oh, and congrats to Sir Lewis for his official knighthood - that's absolutely awesome!